Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

41. Yaroslava

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"Mir!" My hands shaking, I tuck Nilam's gun behind the belt of my jeans and storm out of the club. The sun is blinding after the darkness of the basement; I squint, shielding my face with one hand, but when my eyes adjust to the light, I don't see anyone. The alley is empty.

Mir's car is still parked where he left it, his broken cellphone and the car keys on the ground. "Mir?" No. He wouldn't have left without a reason, not the Mir I know, not after his friend was brutally murdered.

Dread wrenches my guts. Something bad happened.

"Bogdan!"

He doesn't reappear as well.

This is it. The end. The killer has stricken again, and I have no idea how to stop them without Nilam or Mir. Did Bogdan do something to Mir? But I would have heard them, instead it's like Mir quietly walked away. Like he was tricked into leaving, compelled or bound with some sort of spell. Bogdan can't use magic as long as he's insubstantial...unless somebody helped him.

"Lav's not answering her phone," Kadri says, stepping outside through the rusty door after Adélard. Then her eyes land on Mir's smashed cell, and alarm twists her round face. "What happened?"

Kneeling to pick up the car keys, I realize my fingers are stained with Nilam's blood. He left me a clue, didn't he? He wrote it with his blood on the wall. Zagovor. Even being dead, he's helping me. My heart aches again, just as it did when I saw his dead body. I don't believe this is real. Could Laverna betray us? Now I remember Lav saw me closing the door to Mir's room last night. Was she jealous? She once told me, Mir's my only chance to have a place in this world. Or did she think I deprived her of her chance to gain powers? Lav kept asking me how I became a Vedma at the Birch Park, then about Mir's sigil scar at the garage. And wasn't Lav the one who found Jasna's body?..

Nobody heard Laverna leave the apartment last night. But how could you do it, Laverna? Weren't you in love with Nilam once?

"Mir has the Soulwrecker on him," Ady says. "How do we stop the killer without it? Yara, what do we do?" His voice is small, but determined. I look up at him, then at Kadri who nervously tugs at the silk scarf at her neck. They are ready to do anything I say.

It sets my anger aflame.

I have nothing to say! Wiping my fingers on my black t-shirt, I grab the keys and clench them in my hand so the metal digs painfully into my palm. Do they really expect me to solve the problem now? I'm the one who always creates problems, I am the problem. Perhaps if it wasn't for me, none of this would have started in the first place.

Now Mir can die next. How could I fail to notice the obvious? I want to scream and cry at once. This is happening all over again, I'm losing everyone I love just like the day before I burned.

"I can call Mir's brother," Ady suggests. "His stepmom, the law school. Ask everyone who can help find him."

"Great idea, Lishan." Despaired sarcasm pours out of me as I stand up. "The full moon is tonight, the night when the Soulwrecker can be crushed. And you want to gather more people? Sure, bring popcorn, let's watch together as the Soulwrecker devours our souls."

Ady's expression hardens. "What do you propose, then?"

"The sun is high yet."

"And?"

"And I'm angry!" Killing some magic users I've never met is one thing, but killing Nilam? Threatening Mir? No. An angry Vedma--even an ex one--is ruination. I have time till tonight and maybe...a plan of my own. "Do you have any vials of Morox left, Adélard?"